Anniversary of WHOM/Mt. Washington Fire

It’s hard to believe that a half dozen years have passed since the Great Blaze of 2003 that consumed the entire broadcast facility and power generation plant on the top of Mt. Washington. It all occurred on this day in 2003.

I remember being at home in Portland, listening to 94.9 WHOM at shortly past 3 in the afternoon when the station went off the air. Now, this is unfortunately an all-too-common experience when your transmitter is located at a site known as the “home of the world’s worst weather”. This time, however, it simply SOUNDED DIFFERENT. Instead of an abrupt drop of audio and static, the station simply FADED AWAY to static.

After a frantic call to our Chief Engineer, it soon became apparent that something very unusual was happening. A few calls later, the news was startling-the summit was on fire, everything was lost and people were being evacuated.

The next few hours are simply a blur…and the next few months, we switched locations, antennas and modes of broadcasting to stay on the air. Although WHOM’s transmitter building (which housed the generators and used to contain WMTW-TV’s transmitters for years) was a complete loss, but luckily, the WHOM main tower and antenna were spared. While the transmission line literally melted, the tower escaped damage-due solely to the direction of the wind. Had it come from the other direction, there is no doubt the tower would also have been consumed. I will never forget the unbelievable efforts of all the people who worked in simply brutal conditions to bring temporary power generation to the summit, literally running lines across the frozen ground. Our coverage was greatly diminished at times over the following weeks, but it was gratifying to know that WHOM listeners stuck with us! We were not streaming the station over the web at that time, so many fans simply did without—until we were able to rebuild. We will be forever grateful for their loyalty and support! Our advertisers were likewise extremely understanding and supportive of our efforts to get back to 100%.

After all these years, WHOM’s audience is larger than ever-and with the new transmitters, many feel our sound and coverage is better than before. Below is a short video from the summit:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipJW0Bb2rEo

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Long live 94.9 WHOM!!